


and your gut seldom leads you wrong

by slutpuff (systemsofstories)



Series: Tales From The Devil's Nest [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon-Typical References to Genocide, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, Gen, Greed's POV; 2nd person, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Horror, Medical Trauma, Minor Character Death, No Romance, PTSD, Physical Trauma, Psychological Trauma, Severe Illness, Torture, Unethical Science, Unsanitary Living Conditions, animal experimentation, character bonding time, presume anything I write about greed to be intentional, this starts really rough but it's a happy ending I Promise, when it comes to things that don't match canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 12:35:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20309596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/systemsofstories/pseuds/slutpuff
Summary: Your name is Greed, Greed the Avaricious, Greed, who wants all the world can offer, and more. You want it all, and generally that's true. But there were, in fact, quite a few things that you didn't want —like unnecessary time with your siblings, bad beer, and, case in point, the whole situation you were about to find in front of you.Or, the full story of how Greed comes to meet three of the best friends he's ever had.





	and your gut seldom leads you wrong

**Author's Note:**

> this might wind up being the longest fic I've ever written when it's done. god help me. I hope you enjoy, kudos and comments are very appreciated.

Your name is Greed, Greed the Avaricious, Greed, who wants all the world can offer, and more. You want it all, and generally that's true. But there were, in fact, quite a few things that you didn't want —like unnecessary time with your siblings, bad beer, and, case in point, the whole situation you were about to find in front of you.

You were in a town —a city maybe, you never knew the exact boundary between the terms— a bit north of Central and to the west, not doing much of anything specific yet. It's been awhile since you've been tied to a single place; a hundred or so years since you left Father, and at least twenty since you had your shop selling odds and ends in Xing. Probably a handful more than that since you'd last had any person that you kept any bond to; a kind Aerugonian man living in Xing. You were friends for years, and he aged, and he died —of some illness you never knew enough about medicine to identify— and from that point onwards your bonds with humans were kept knee-deep only. Difficult for you, but not impossible.

Especially if you made a point to keep moving.

And that wasn't hard at all. There was always something you wanted somewhere, so you just stayed mobile and sought out whatever you could dream of —objects, experiences, automobiles, bugs, birds, fossil fish— one by one, catching and releasing or finding and giving or finding and selling or, most frequently, finding and hoarding in one of the small handful of rundown establishments that you had scattered throughout Amestris —and Xing, and Aerugo, and a good few places more than that— for exactly that purpose.

You had actually just been to one in the southern West, and were now traveling around on your route towards the next one in the North, finding things and killing time as you moved clockwise around Central. Which is what landed you in this city/town/whatever place, eyeing a building that ticked on some sense of interest in you, drawing you in, and having you disregard any barriers and Keep Out signs and PRIVATE PERSONNEL ONLY placards that, let's be honest, you wouldn't have regarded anyway.

You avoid the guards and pick a lock (read: destroy a lock) with the claw of your shield, and slip into a side entrance to Janitorial successfully without notice.

Contrary to the oldish-looking exterior, the interior of the building is more new-looking and polished. White walls match the white floors, and the ceiling is only a shade or two off. It looks kinda like shit, actually, but you aren't an interior decorator and you certainly aren't this place's home design critic.

"Nice place." you snort quietly, and you keep walking, careful to step lightly, eyeing the...rather large quantities of disinfectants. Is this a medical facility?

You hope not. There's not anything you could find in a medical facility that you would want.

But as you continue down the hall, waste of bandages and bloodied linens and used syringes made you start to think it probably is. You consider turning around. There'd be minimal bullshit (read: angry guards) to deal with if you cut your losses and back out now; you might even get away without any. But your gut drove you in here, and your gut was seldom wrong, and you're bulletproof, stubborn, and a bit of an idiot, so you keep going.

The real red flags started subtle and simple —a feather on the ground. You squat down to pick it up, and it's a pretty one, with a nice green shift, and blood was dried on the quill like it had been forcibly pulled from its owner. First it was one, then you find another, and another, leading you down to a bloodied clump of breast feathers in a waste bin.

The next flag you find was a blocked-access hall leading down to a crematorium.

Your distrust grew and stayed growing as you continued, the feeling writhing in your skin, and the next thing you discover is what appears to be the building's supply room. You investigate —because of course you do, it's a room full of stuff— only to have your stomach twist in knots as you find it full of things that you know a bit too well shouldn't be needed together. Like human stretchers and animal tranquillisers. Packs —_packs!_— of reusable restraints and bulk containers of plain white chalk.

Something wasn't right here. You could see it in the surroundings, you could smell it in the air that smelled more and more like sanitiser and animals and smoke the farther you went in. Not the pleasant aroma of wood smoke, but the harsh chemical smoke that smelled like poison, the kind that often came with—

In the distance, light like lightning lit up the end of the corridor sparking and crackling a few seconds before fading away.

—alchemy.

You groan. You were afraid of this. This was the exact kind of thing that you stay out of Central to avoid. The sort of situation that you constantly keep on the move to not have to deal with. Because all the evidence at your fingertips said this was not a "sanctioned" —for whatever empty meaning that had, knowing the offices your siblings had— facility, this was not "legal" alchemy, this was _definitely_ not a medical institute, and your siblings almost certainly have been in this building before.

You push your fingers through your hair and sigh. You just hope they aren't here _now_. Because the whole place is rubbing you wrong, and if you're going to do something —which you _are_, you know you are, that was probably set in stone by the time you saw the crematorium— about whatever it is that's going on, you don't want to have to do it while dealing with one or more of them.

You continue onward toward the light you saw, preemptively shielding your forearms and hands, because hey, you don't really know what you're getting into. Having weapons ready wasn't going to hurt anything.

As you get closer, your eyes start to be able to discern the alchemy formulas drawn out on the ground in the center atrium, some partly swept up, one only partly written. White-clad men were squatting around another, examining it while others wheeled..._something_ down the hall directly across from the one you're standing in, awful rasps echoing behind it.

"Oh, here."

You focus on the voice as the owner of it chuckles, pointing to a spot on the formula diagram.

"We forgot one of those connectors on this side. No wonder it failed."

The other man laughs and your skin crawls to the point of shuddering. This —and you're not totally sure you know what "this" is beyond hazarded guesses— was just simple trial and error for them. Data points on a clipboard. Even without knowing more than a good guess you know that whatever is happening is something that shouldn't be dealt with so flippantly. You're reminded a little too much of your family.

You hear the other man agree with the first, but you've honestly stopped listening. You heard enough already, your stomach is churning, anything else you need to know you can find out yourself.

So you crouch down in the shadows of the hall you're in, and take note of what you're dealing with. The building is laid out like some kind of awful spider, except with five halls for legs: two on one end and three on the other, which is to say, it looks nothing like a spider at all, actually. But it reminds you of one anyway, so who cares, no one's listening, here in your thoughts it's a goddamn spider. You reason that there has to be some kind of rooms or something in the space between where you were and western hall since the building hadn't looked like this outside, but that's not something you were going to concern yourself with just yet.

The...thing that had been wheeled away had been taken down the north-most hall, you standing in the shadows of the one in the south. Aside from that one, you have two other wings to check, one in the southeast, and one just north of that. There's also the one to the west, but it's cordoned off with chain and a sign and its lights are off —it seems to be in disuse. Perhaps it's under maintenance, or there was some kind of toxic spill or something. Who knows. For all you know, it could just be the latest spot where Sloth has decided to take a nap.

You work out a plan, or something vaguely resembling one. You'll have to go east first, then work your way through the halls clockwise, and just hope it works out more or less alright. Hopefully you'll be able to accomplish something before things get too terribly chaotic, or at least, before the staff realise you're behind it.

So you slip out of the janitorial hall and behind a machine, edge along a wall, and sneak into the next hallway.

Unlike the wing you were just in, this one's not as long. Only about twenty feet or so, with just one door on each side and one at the end. You take the one to the left, and open it to find that yeah, your stomach was right to be churning, because the room is mostly barren except for a large cage spanning the whole back wall, filled not with animals or chimeras, but human people. Immediately, one of them beckons you frantically.

"Here." they hiss, urging you closer. The others in the cage seem more wary. "You're not one of them. You can't be. You're not supposed to be here, but you got in somehow, so ple—"

You cut them off with a gesture to be silent, but nod.

"I'm gonna break you out of there. But you have to be quiet."

They shake their head.

"There's no key, they have it, just please, my daughter, across the hall, a hare, they're going to—"

Again, you silence them.

"Quiet."

You run your hand up the bars, feeling the strength and material. You could break it, but it'd be loud. It was made with alchemy and the bars were stone in the center. But anything that has a key has a lock, and locks are always made more delicate.

"Don't scream." you warn, and once again you call up your shield to cover your hand, transforming your fingers to claws that you could then use in place of the key, not really picking the lock so much as cutting and destroyed the components of it until it opened anyway.

"Don't ask." you say, beating one prisoner to the chance to speak. You turn to the first one. "Your daughter?"

They nodded.

"They took our children. Please." another says, and all of them look about to sob. You grit your teeth. You don't know much of what to do with that.

"I'll get them too, don't worry." you say, not technically a lie. You would. But the parent had every reason to worry, especially considering that all you'd really done was open a cage. You have no idea if they'll make it out of this place at all. And it's not reasonable to try to get them out personally, nor fair, or feasible, with how many people were here.

"What's the other room?" you ask, gesturing in its vague direction.

"The ones that fight." It was a different person this time, a young girl, but old enough to not look out of place with the adults. "They put my father in there three days ago."

Another family. You don't know how they could do this or why, ethically or logistically. Where were they taking families from? Why? What was the story for why these people must have just vanished?

You push it out of your head. There wasn't any use lingering on it when you'd likely never get answers.

"I'll be right back." you say, and leave to go open the other rooms' cages.

When you return though, guiding a line of children through the door, followed by a handful of men and two women from the solitary cages, you have the gist of the how you'd been questioning, especially as they regrouped with their families. These were mixed race households, Amestrian-Ishvalan. Save for one woman, everyone that had been separated was very clearly a child of Ishvala.

You feel like you're going to be sick.

You clear your throat to get everyone's attention in the now-crowded room and to shake your attention from the fact you can't do anything about. You need everyone to listen, and you can't afford to speak too loudly.

"Okay, I need you to listen." you begin. You pause though, wishing you had something else to say to them. Like that you brought them snacks, or a hard drink, or that you could guarantee their passage out of here. "You don't need to know who I am. What you need to know, is that from what I've seen and gathered to be true here, is that this is a chimera lab, and you're being kept as materials."

You pause again.

"And I can't get you out of here."

A variety of reactions spread across the group like the flames of a grease fire, and overlapping voices threatened to rise. You gesture vaguely with your arms.

"Please, let me finish." you continue, and the voices drop. "I can't get you out of here. But I'm going to tell you what I can do and what I'm going to do, so please listen closely. After I leave this room, I'm going to go and set the animals loose. And animals...well, they don't like me very much. It's going to get very loud, and my cover will be blown, and all of the staffs' attention will be on me. Use me as a diversion and get yourselves out; there's an exit at the end of the janitorial wing just south of this one, just to the left when your facing the atrium from here. I broke the lock on the door at the end."

"Won't you get hurt, mister?"

It was a child, a little girl with big round cherry eyes and an expression that said she wasn't broken yet. You force a little smile for her despite how much the gravity of the situation and the horror of the happenings and the twisting of your stomach made you feel like you wouldn't have one on your lips for days.

"I'll be fine, kid. They can't hurt me in any way that actually matters."

The kid smiles, and just like that, your fake grin actually manages to slide a little into something that was actually genuine. The feeling of it makes you realise how far down you had been sinking and drives you back up, and it's funny, really, how that tends to work.

"I should get out of here and on to the animals. Nice meeting you all. Remember, don't try to leave until you hear the cacophony of zoological hell start up next door."

You wave and leave the room, not lingering long enough to let them ask questions or say goodbye or thank you or worst of all, let you get attached to them. You couldn't do getting attached anymore, certainly not when any one of them could die and some of them probably would. They could all walk, they could get themselves out, and you didn't need to be with them to do it. You had kept humans no closer than arm's length for over twenty years, had no relations with them deeper than one-night stands for over twenty years, had spent over twenty years safeguarding yourself from the eventuality of losing cherished possessions because unlike you, humans aren't very durable at all.

Oh yeah, durability, you think. You needed some of that right about now. There was no way you were going to get out of the next wing without an attempted mauling, and honestly, probably not without heavy gunfire at the same time. It'd be best to just preemptively throw on the full shield and not risk unnecessary death and damage. It wasn't as if there were any babes here anyway.

So you cover yourself in it, head to toe, and even though only you could see it —and it was necessary, and smart, and now was not the time for vanity— you still feel a blow to your ego because you really, really hate how you look covered in this thing.

You slip out of the wing you're in, and sidle along the wall to the entrance of the next one, a considerable amount of space. You manage to dodge the views of the workers again, and you dart into the hall to almost instantaneously be met with the beginnings of distrusting snarls.

This area, you've discovered, isn't separated into rooms like the humans were. It's all open, the hall opening up to cages like the mouth of a river, and god there were a lot. Everything from lab animals to big cats, pets and exotics, mammals, fish, birds —you even spot a hippo in a tiny corner enclosure, and god, this was going to suck so _bad_. But maybe the riling they get from your presence would help some them get away, or at least give the staff of this place a royally hard time.

There's no time to waste. The researchers in the atrium were going to come down here, and your choices now were getting caught before or after you get some pissed-off animals out of their cages. You want the latter.

"Alright, alright." you say softly as you approach the cages. "It's okay. I'm Greed, let's be friends—"

You reach for the lock on the nearest cage to your hands, and it starts _immediately_.

Barking! Howling! Snarls, growls! The dogs in the pen were leaping against the bars at you in an instant, trying to claw, bite, scratch, anything that they could manage to do. Already, the ruckus was drawing attention from the men that were drawing formulas on the atrium floor.

"Can't you please be quiet," you plead as you mess with the cage door, and a moment later it swings open to unleash the fury of six dogs that you had no time to get mauled by.

You dart to the next cage and do the same, and the next, and now, with outraged sounds that span across the animal kingdom, the researchers are heading in to investigate and you're seriously running out of time.

"What in the hell...hey they're out! The cages are open, someone's here!"

You jump on top of the cage of raptors to evade immediate sight —though it probably didn't matter much— and break the top bars with your hands, letting the birds shoot out of the hole and start wreaking havoc on everything and everyone that their pissed little eyes could spot.

Unfortunately, what little shred of cover you had was now completely blown, and the man that had yelled before was coming toward you, pointing.

"You! How did— oh God, what is that!?! Monster! Guns!"

He runs for back up and for a second, you're confused —until you remember exactly what you look like at the moment, and then you honestly can't blame him, even if making monsters was in part of his job description. You look pretty monstrous right now.

But right now, that was to your advantage. Maybe if you snag a coat from somewhere you can pass yourself off as human enough that they wouldn't notice you in the chaos that was building with every cage you broke open.

And god, were you breaking a ton. Two thirds of the cages in the left half alone were now open, and the lab was looking more and more like an insurrection at a zoo. The animals were jumping and clawing at you, at each other, and many were running for the exit into the atrium. Overlapping cries and sounds were drowning your ears, squawks and shrill piercing screeches and roars and

_pRrrrrrakkK!_

Gunfire shrieks toward you and ricochets off your body, more following as you try to ignore and avoid it while keeping to breaking the cages from above in hopes that less gunfire would hit the animals.

"It's not working! What is that!?"

"I don't know! Get the heavys!"

You're not totally sure what he's referring to, but you don't have time for it. It wouldn't kill you, and that's all that mattered, and while you hope that it's not worse for the animals, you're not going to grieve too much. They're already dead —they died when they were brought here. If any of the people or animals you released make it out alive, you're a necromancer. Legally, you think. People that get spirited away by the government usually get marked dead on the registers.

That was probably going to be a huge hassle for the people you released, but that was not your problem.

The lighter shots of the initial guns were soon replaced by larger and denser artillery, and really, you're starting to question your decision that this was going to be how you spend your day. You weren't even getting anything out of this. You were just following your gut, and—

You jump up to be caught by a missed shot and ride the momentum to land on top of a cage that would've taken much longer to climb.

—your gut seldom led you _wrong_, just...out of your way.

This was definitely way, way out of your way.

Cage after cage, you continue to scramble across the tops and smash them open and take heavy fire and mostly ignore it. There's birds striking at your head, a wolf snarling from below, and the hippo you were about to free was thrashing in its pen. You wonder how they even got a hippo in the first place, or why they'd dare to think that combining the strength of a hippo with _literally_ anything else would be a good idea. But it worked out for you, so as far as you were concerned it didn't matter. You'd be real tough for it to chew if it tried to bite you.

You smash the lock to its pen to open the door and release it, and hurry to the next ones, and as you finish them off you realise that most of the men firing at you have fled. Only one was left, separated by animals and rubble, and you have an...idea born from your earlier thoughts. Probably a stupid one.

You walk over to the scientist and he shoots the last rounds of his gun into, or rather, _against_ your chest. He's trembling and seems to be attempting to talk, but if he was he wasn't succeeding. You grab him and throw him over your shoulder and climb the raptor cage you had broken before.

"Sorry about this." you say as he flails in your grip; his eyes are bugging out and you _were_ sorry, but....not very much.

You whack the back of his head with the heel of your palm, take his lab coat and drop his unconscious body in the hole atop the cage, and jump back down.

Time to see how dumb people were in this hell of a "laboratory". It was tiring to be being shot at constantly, and you wanted to actually be able to leave without your siblings immediately following you. And you still had a whole wing of monsters to unleash, and you didn't want anything shot that didn't have to be because of you.

You hide behind a cage in the corner and remove the shield from your hands and feet and head and neck, making you look normal, at least mostly, as soon as you shrugged the lab coat on. It probably looked ridiculous. But if no one looked too closely...

You grab the discarded weapon that the scientist had emptied and did the simplest thing you could to create something to run from:

"Hey boy, wanna play? Wanna play?"

Play time.

You approached all the dogs, the wolves, the panther and bobcats and lion, and anything else of similar build, and made to pet them, and bam, an instant threat is born.

You bolt. You run out to the atrium, your best expression of fear on your face, looking frantically over your shoulder and clicking the trigger of the empty pistol pointlessly at the hall like humans so often did at you.

"Run! Get something, anything! It's sending the animals after us! Send the chimeras, do something! The guns aren't working, oh God, help!"

You made you cries as panicked and distressed as you could, and you deserve a medal, because somehow, it actually worked.

"Yes! Everyone, to the chimera wing!" a military scientist shouted. "Let them all out; we fight fire with fire! Don't let that thing out alive!"

You keep your act up and give a resolute nod to your "superior" and everyone hurries to the northern wing, fumbling key rings and looking just as afraid of the chimeras as they were of you. You can't actually believe that this dumb plan worked. But even you can't get everything for free, and the cost of this is that you're now an a _very_ short clock until they realise either that you piss off the chimeras too much, that you don't have keys, or that the monster is gone and you don't work here. They were going to know something was up and you needed to get out of here. Animal chimeras didn't usually do well in the wild anyway, and you freed the people and animals, and fuck, two out of three isn't bad. So you follow them to the chimera wing until you're certain everyone's attention is elsewhere, and you take off —where?

No exits in the human and animal wings, just one in janitorial but if anyone followed that'd be the obvious choice for an exit strategy. You recall a western entrance outside, though, so you make a split-second decision to take the hall that'd been cordoned off. Nothing down there could possibly be very harmful to you.

Sounds of chaos chorused behind you as you darted down the darker hall —lit only by emergency lights, it seemed— and you slow about fifteen feet in, switching to a brisk walk as soon as you were pretty sure that you had enough of a start on them to afford it.

It sure was an odd hall though, you think as you go. Empty for quite aways. And then: windows. You peer through them and squint through the darkness and you're suddenly made aware that the gunfire had eased your stomach earlier because now it was twisting and churning more violently before and you feel yourself drifting to a place you don't want to go.

It was....testing gear. That would have to be the only generalisation you could use, except maybe also "torture devices", but that was a bit direct and in your opinion, less descriptive of what really made your skin crawl like fleshy ants, which is that it _wasn't_ torture. It was experimentation. And to experiment this way on people —and you're certain it was people from the things you see in the room— is far more dehumanising and cruel than to do the same things for torture, you think. You've been through a lot of things, deaths upon deaths and torture among them. But death and torture aren't subtle about what they are. Only experimentation tries to sound much nicer than what it is. Nobler, more progressive. For science, in the name of the future, for _progress_ a few teeth must be pulled.  
A few arms removed. A few organs opened and explored. A few homunculi drowned. A few dozen procedures without anaesthetic. A few things you try not to think about.

_Progress_.

You can recognise medical stations in the room past the glass, and there are military training tools too. Devices that launch projectiles, exercise equipment, something that looks a bit like a chest freezer. A lot of tables equipped with restraints, and you remember the far too many reusable restraint packs that you'd found in the supply closet. You force yourself not to think about what kind of force had to be summoned under what kind of horror that the things would snap from the strain so often.

More similar rooms followed, and you refuse to look. But you know, with all of their placement to the hall's left, all with large windows and ample sills to lean on, that the purpose for the bit of hall you were in was viewing.

You keep walking and rip the lab coat off your body, as if what you realised it had witnessed could somehow taint you, had tainted you. You run your fingers along the now unshielded skin of your arms. You feel unclean. You feel _misled_. Because there was nothing good here. Nothing you wanted was in this horrid place, there never has been. It's a place full of nightmares, and you had more than enough of those every family reunion.

A sound distinct from the cacophony behind you becomes audible, and you tense up. But it was coming from ahead of you, and as you draw closer...it's coughing. Horrible hacking, the kind your friend had done a lot as he became sicker. The kind that would become so strong that he'd retch up his stomach contents from the force. That sort of coughing.

Between the coughs, a voice.

"That's it, it's okay."  
"It's alright, this will pass."  
"Just a bit longer, you'll be better soon."

And other platitudes. The voice was strong, and it seemed kind, but it was lying.

You got closer and when you were about fifteen feet away, you could see it clear in the dim emergency lighting that these were people, barred into a cell too small for their numbers. A little closer than that, and you could see from a couple of them that they were chimeras, and they were also in really bad shape. From were you were you could see most of them, and they all looked to be sick, wounded, or both. And that was definitely putting it lightly.

You look behind you at an empty corridor. For now, at least, you weren't being followed.

You bite the bullet and walk closer, and the owner of the voice —a huge, and you mean _huge_, burly man that reminded you of someone you couldn't place— turns his attention away from the small man he'd been comforting and towards you.

He'd been beaten. Again, an understatement. He was bruised, battered, and bloodied across his chest, arms and and every other bit of him visible. You would bet good money that the parts that weren't looked the same.

He stands and comes to edge of the bars to meet your approach, and you notice once you're at the bars that the floors in the middle of the cell are bloody and the people inside somehow look even worse than you thought.

The two of you attempt to speak at the same time, producing an unintelligible mixture of your sentences.

"You first." you say. He nods.

"Who are you?" he asks. He sounds cautious, wary, and he more than has the right to be. But he also sounds something else that's harder to label.

"I'm called Greed." you say. "Weird name, I know. Roll with it, it's the only one I've got."

You flash a toothy grin almost purely on muscle memory. The man remained cautious, but seemed a little less tense.

"You're not one of them."

It was a question, or perhaps, one of those sentences that request a confirmation. It was a hell of a lot easier to tell people's expectations back in Xing, where the language designated it clearly. You shake your head.

"Not at all, thank fuck. Though I did pretend to be for a hot second uhhhhhhhhh..." You trail off, counting on your fingers. "I don't know, twenty minutes ago?"

He breathes in a way that might've been a weak laugh, but you can't tell. His expressions barely changed, and the sound just as well could've been masking pain from a broken rib. This guy looked like he might have several.

"Listen," he says leaning his face against the bars, and a different, more desperate and pleading look shows in his eyes. "I have more questions, but this is the most important, and I need to know. Can you help us, please, in any way you can."

You look at the inhabitants of the cell. Several were badly wounded, one looked like his injury had become badly infected. At least two were ill, and the two that definitely were were a caliber of ill you haven't seen since your friend passed. One of them wasn't going to make it much longer. One girl looked mostly intact in her physical health, but her eyes spoke of a damage deeper than pain and sickness can touch.

One person in the far corner, you think, is dead.

"What happened here?" you ask. "You're chimeras, right? The test subjects? What the hell happened?"

You gesture at the whole cell. The blood, the filth, the waste that wasn't being removed or cleaned out and was being kept as separate from the people as was possible, but was accumulating. The vomit. The blood all over the bedclothes that the small, stocky man had been coughing on. The thinning stomachs of everyone there. All of it.

"They left us. We've been like this for three days. I can last a few more but Dolcetto isn't going to make it much longer without food and water, please."

Dolcetto, from what you can tell, is the small man he'd been tending to that is so violently ill. If it's been three days, you're impressed the guy's alive at all. And if they were at three days without food and water, the one that looked sicker still didn't have a chance, no matter if you helped or not.

"Please help us. Even just some of us. If you can help us, please, help us."

He was pleading, begging, and you couldn't look or hardly even listen, because there was a familiarity in that desperation. And it didn't matter if you listened at this point anyway, because the second you understood the situation you knew that you were going to be throwing away twenty-some years of effort today. You might've even known a little sooner. Because you could see small shreds of individuals buried deep under trauma and dirt in each one of them, see what was left in the body of the corpse, see what was fading in the two that were dying, and you couldn't. You couldn't let them die here, you wouldn't.

You look at the massive man, who was still watching you with pleading eyes.

"Can you walk?" you ask. He looks as if he can't breathe for a moment, and you continue, eyeing the person that was practically sitting on death's doorstep. "There's no way he or the little dude can, and I can only carry about two people at a time without sacrificing speed to keep everyone in place."

The man finds his voice again, processing your words.

"You're going to help us?" he asks, and he sounds almost doubting, like he's afraid you'll reveal it was a joke.

"Well, I'm sure not gonna let you die here, not if I can help it. But I need to know how many of you can walk, and if anyone —probably you, actually— can carry people if I can't carry everyone that needs it."

You look down the long hallway to the atrium, realising that the ruckus that had been so loud is now much quieter. They'd be done with the animals and looking soon, if they weren't already.

"We should probably hurry with it." you add. "It's not going to be long before they think to check for me down here."

He looks about to ask, but stops himself, steeling his face.

"I can walk." he says. "And carry one, maybe two."

He looks like a soldier, you think, one reporting to a superior officer. He probably was a soldier once. You hate to think what hell he saw before the one he lived in now, so you don't.

He glances at the doors to the cell, and then his expression falls.

"Did you...steal the keys?"

He knows the answer, or at least anticipates it. The hope leaves his face so fast you feel like your chest is being carved out with a pumpkin scoop.

You shake your head, but try to pull out the biggest smile you can manage in the circumstances. You meet his eye.

"Don't worry about that, big dude. I don't need one. Get back though, I'm gonna do something cool and you're in sorry shape already."

You crack your fingers and walk to the cell door, and he obeys, but he protests, unconvinced.

"It won't work! I tried, it's rein—" he starts, but he's cut off as you snap the bars that held the lock and rip them off the cell entirely, dust from the bars' stone cores flying into the air.

"That's better." you laugh, and set the pieces against the wall before flinging the door open and sauntering inside.

Everyone's staring at you now. Even the people that hadn't bothered to glance up before had their eyes fixed on you now. The big man you had been talking to was standing agape, speechless.

There wasn't much time for speech anyway, though, you figure.

"Okay, if you can stand, stand, if you walk at all, get ready to, we're getting the fuck out of here. I'm carrying the sick, so if you're too injured to walk, tell the big guy here, we're leaving."

People start testing their legs, trying to stand, checking their injuries, and you walk to the cot on the cell's right, where the small man —Dolcetto?— was laying, seemingly unconscious.

"Hey, little guy, you gotta wake up we're goin'." you say, and touch your hand to his cheek, and it's like you took a hammer to a pipe because as soon as you did the tears start flowing.

"Ah fuck, fuck, fuck," you say, taking your hand back immediately. The tall man says something, but you're a little too caught up in the situation to hear him. You really should've known better. "I'm sorry, man, shit, fuck. I'm sorry."

You bite your lip and push your fingers together. You've gotta get him out somehow. At least now he was up.

You try again.

"Alright little dude, uh, I'm sorry about this but we really gotta go, alright? You're a bit too fucked up to walk right now, so I need to carry you. I'm gonna pick you up now, okay? Okay."

You let him process for a moment on the off-chance he was actually lucid under the dazed look of fever, just for a moment, and pick him up, situating him in your right arm so that his neck was supported on your chest and your grip on him was solid. You did the same with the young...something, that was a bit sicker and curled up on the floor, scooping them up in your left. You could feel the fever as soon as you touched them or more accurately, as soon as you got near them. It was hotter than the other one's, which was too hot already, and it radiated off of them like a space heater. You were going to see this kid die, and soon.

You stand up to face the others, two on foot, two on the tall man, and you hear it. They'd started down this way.

"We have to go, now." you say, your carefree tone gone. "Hurry in front of me, try to stay as single file in front of me as you can. Run!"

You throw your shield up on the entire back side of your body and pull you arms in toward your chest. You needed to keep the two you were carrying as out of the gunfire as possible and—

_pRRrrrrackkkKk!_

—that was already starting.

The big man looked back in panic.

"Greed—"

"I'm fine!" you yell before he can finish. "Just run! It'll take more than this to bring me down! I told you I'm getting you out of here, and I don't lie!"

You give a bit of a grin, and he looks bewildered, but he nods like before and focuses on running ahead. You run, and run, and a bullet grazes your face but you don't think Dolcetto notices that or the regeneration. Finally, you see it, the two on foot in front of you open the door and even with the sun setting the light outside seems blinding in contrast to this place's dimly lit halls.

"We made it!"

"Stop them!"

And rapid-fire gunshots tear through the situation from the outside, and you lose sight of the two that weren't carried.

"Fuck!"

You clench your jaw but you don't have the time to worry when there are still five people depending on your help and you can't be a shield against both sides of the fire.

"Shit; big guy! Get them in your arms, back to the fire! You can take it better and I'll help you heal later, but these shot'll kill the one on your back! Once you're out, face the wall on your right and _fucking book it!_"

He heeds your command instantly, and you knew he would, despite your being a stranger, despite your instruction to use himself as a wall, which, by the way, was the absolute last thing you wanted to have to ask any of these people to do. It wasn't fair. But you knew he would do it, because when he begged you to help them, even just a few, you knew what he was really saying was _"it's okay to leave me— save my friends."_

He would have done this sort of thing with or without you; he wanted to protect. Probably anyone and everyone he could. That was his greed, and you could read it in his soul, as plainly written as everyone else's. You just directed it, so that maybe he'd live through this long enough to see the fruits of his efforts.

You grit your teeth and hurry after him.

You weren't going to let anyone die here. Not in this place. Not if you could help it.


End file.
